This invention relates generally to the art of liquid detergents, and, more particularly, to the art of a liquid laundry product containing both detergent and bleach or product containing detergent, bleach and fabric softener with a long shelf life.
Concentrated liquid detergent compositions have long been on the market. To date, however, no totally satisfactory laundry product containing both a concentrated detergent and a bleach has been available. It has been necessary to add liquid laundry products to the wash solution simultaneously with a measured amount of bleach so that it has been necessary to separately measure two products for the wash and withhold the bleach, if a hypochlorite bleach, until five minutes into the wash cycle. The primary difficulty which causes this duplicity of effort in the prior art has been the inability to produce a stable liquid laundry product containing both detergent and bleach. The term stable as used herein refers to the ability of a product to retain its essential characteristics while traveling through the marketplace moving from producer to consumer. Such products must be sufficiently stable to withstand the rigors of shipping, shelf storage and home storage. Since laundry products utilized heretofore have not possessed the required stability, it has been necessary to separately measure detergent and bleach at the time of use.
An attempt to overcome the above discussed stability problems has led to the use of powdered laundry products containing both detergent and bleach. By utilizing a powdered product it is possible to physically isolate the detergent component from the bleach component during storage. The components encounter one another only upon being dissolved within the wash water. While the use of a powdered product overcomes the stability problems, it does not result in the desirable attributes associated with a liquid product, such as the benefit obtained by pouring the liquid product directly onto a stained area of the fabric before washing, as well as ease of dissolving in cold water.
A phosphate based laundry product containing bleach is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,130,164. The product is stated to be a stable suspension emulsion or a coacervate with little tendency for the components to separate out upon standing. This product, however, does contain a phosphate which from an environmental standpoint is undesirable.